Newspaper visionary, Howard Weaver, visits UAA to discuss mass media in transition

UAA Honors College welcomes former Anchorage Daily News editor to campus
Howard Weaver, former Anchorage Daily News editor and current vice president for news for The McClatchy Company, will visit the University of Alaska Anchorage on Friday, September 21 to present a lecture entitled Information Saturation: Sustaining a place for journalism in a ubiquitous media world.

The lecture will be held from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at UAA's Rasmuson Hall, room 101.  Howard Weaver will be introduced by Jack Roderick, former Anchorage mayor, oil investor, lease broker and author of "Crude Dreams: A Personal History of Oil and Politics in Alaska."  This event is sponsored by the UAA Honors College.  

Weaver's lecture will evaluate mass media in transition - how the norms of yesterday (mass circulation newspapers, licensed monopoly broadcast stations, etc.) have given way to an unsettled present and uncertain future.  "Information" clearly has been transformed; is the same true about what we call  "journalism," the process of sorting, filtering, verifying and prioritizing?  Perhaps equally important, what does the changing economic landscape, which tends to separate advertising revenue from news content, mean for the future of news gathering?

A roundtable discussion will follow the lecture.  Panelists include Howard Weaver, vice president for news at The McClatchy Company and former editor of the Anchorage Daily News; John Tracy, KTUU Channel 2 news director; Corinna Delgado, performance poet and promotions director for Clear Channel Radio; and John Proffitt, IT director for APTI.  

Howard Weaver was born and raised in Anchorage.  He first worked at the Anchorage Daily News during high school covering sports.  After graduating from college, Weaver returned to the newspaper where he worked in many different capacities, including court reporter, legislative correspondent, special projects reporter and eventually editor.  During his 23 years at the Anchorage Daily News, Weaver grew the newspaper's staff from 30 to 110 and twice wrote and directed projects for which the newspaper won Pulitzer Prizes.  Weaver is now the senior editorial executive for The McClatchy Company, which publishes 31 daily and more than 50 community newspapers, related Web sites and other businesses.